neilgodfrey wrote: ↑Sun May 14, 2023 4:50 pm
austendw wrote: ↑Mon May 08, 2023 11:22 pmThe sense that Leviticus say, seems to be of "different" from its surroundings
...
Or if you think I have selected a weak example, what is your strongest?
My Leviticus comment definitely was a weak example, which I should have cut ... it was more a note to self that I'm happy to disown.
So, let's concentration on the multiple sets of laws:
- The Covenant Code (CC- Ex 21-23)
- The Holiness Code (HC - Lev 17-27)
- The Deuteronomic Code (D - Deut. 12-28)
- The so-called Ritual Decalogue (RD - Ex. 34)
The three large law corpora (CC, D & HC), crucially, have numerous overlaps - similar laws, sometimes expressed identically, sometimes with additional nuances, and sometimes with notable differences. Both the similarities and differences seem hard to explain in Gmirkin’s scenario. How would they have come about? Did, say, three different groups of scholars in Alexandria independently come up with different Codes: CC, HC and D? Hardly plausible, as they have too much in common to be independent. So why are there three parallel, related codes at all? Gmirkin’s scenario doesn’t offer a reason for either the similarities between codes or the differences between them, or the clear intertextual relationships. It’s even less easy to comprehend how the Jerusalem leadership (whoever they were) would authorize three brand-new rival law codes, which created contradictions which didn’t exist before, and include them all, without any serious attempt to reconcile them.
If the aim was to create a definitive law code, and if no law codes already existed, is it not likelier that, even if there were multiple scholars involved producing rival codes, they would make an effort to conflate them and avoid repetitions and inconsistencies? This wouldn’t have been a tall order, and Josephus shows us precisely how it could have been done. In Antiquities, he resolves the problem by systematising the laws: he conflates CC with D, placed where Deuteronomy appears in the Pentateuch; he removes references to religious festivals & sexual matters from this combined CC/D, and instead includes them with all the other cultic rules at Mt Sinai (P’s Tabernacle, priestly rules, festivals, sacrificial & dietary & sexual laws). The “Ritual Decalogue” - a sort of short compendium of key cultic laws found in other codes - is omitted entirely. In doing this, all of the repetitions and disagreements are eliminated, giving the laws a logic and consistency that would surely have pleased Plato. Josephus explained what he did explicitly:
“All is here written as he left it: we have added nothing for the sake of embellishment, nothing which has not been bequeathed by Moses. Our one innovation has been to classify the various subjects; for he left what he wrote in a scattered condition, just as he received each separate instruction from God.” (Antiquities 4.196 - Thackarey transl.)
Surely, if the Pentateuch was created from scratch, the sort of authorial collaboration that Gmirkin proposes for the Pentateuch itself could easily have achieved precisely this more "rational," uniform, and consistent law code. So why didn’t it?
In relation to the different codes, there is still much scholarly discussion as to whether D was meant to supplant the CC, or to supplement it; whether the HC was similarly intended to displace or refine D (assuming that’s the correct order). The implication of the former is that that the various codes were not originally meant to appear together in the same literary work and were only brought together by a later editor/editors determined not to intervene too much (which is compatible with the “Neo-Documentary Theory”). The alternative is that each set of laws was added to the existing laws/narrative, for the specific purpose of refining and revising those earlier versions while not eliminating previous versions (compatible with “Supplementary Theories”). In either case, it seems pretty clear to me that only a diachronic approach explains the subtly nuanced literary relationships between them all. That doesn’t answer the question of what the motive and aims of the people responsible for amalgamating and developing all this material was - but I think it pretty much demands that any answer must take into account that there
was earlier pre-existing material that editors did not have free reign to junk, and that the text grew over a period of time. This explains the Pentateuch as we find it (and, moreover, the variations in the LXX, Samaritan Pentateuch & DDS) more plausibly than Gmirkin’s theory of synchronic “semi-collaboration”.
This is not to mention the festival laws, which (though Gmirkin presumably does not consider them as connected to Plato) show persistent signs of diachronic development and successive intertextual amendment. This can best be seen in the relationship between Passover and the Festival of Unleavened bread, which were originally separate. The various different places where these two are discussed (Ex 12-13; Ex 23:14-17; Ex 34:18-25; Lev 23; Numb 28-29; Deut 16:1-18) show clear signs of diachronic development. One can see clear development in the amalgamation of Passover/Unleavened Bread both within sections (eg sequential supplementations of base texts in Ex 12 & Deut 16 where the process of conflation can be seen "in action", as it were) and by comparing texts (say Ex 23:14 & Num 28:17).*
I do want to be clear... I am not insisting that there need be many hundreds of years between these laws. But I am certainly insisting that there can't be as few as the five or six years that Gmirkin allows (though he never actually says this explicitly **). The point, really the
only point, that I am making in all of this is that
Gmirkin's theory of the composition of these laws doesn't account for either the similarities between the laws, the differences between the laws, and the relationships between the laws.
Gmirkin doesn't much investigate any of this. Indeed in the Plato book, when discussing the likeness or lack of likeness to Greek laws, just dips into the laws (is this what is known as "quote-mining"?) and discusses them in relation to the Greek laws, but not to each other - more or less ignoring the fact that they do come from separate law codes and the relationships between the sets of laws aren't straightforward. I think that this results in some flawed understanding of the Biblical laws - in particular his representation of the biblical laws on murder & unintentional killing, where he makes a big claim that close examination of the biblical texts proves to be quite incorrect. But before I present that in full, I need to renew my Perlego subscription to ensure I quote Gmirkin precisely.
* What was or wasn't actually being practiced in this regard - in terms either of cultic activity in temple/sanctuaries, or the practices of the general populace - isn't the issue here. We are simply discussing the fact that texts show variation, contradiction, clear supplemental development etc, and do not comprise anything like a consistent, coherent corpus of festival regulations, as one would surely expect of Gmirkin's theory of prescriptive legislation commited to writing within such a narrow time frame.
** Gmirkin dates the Hebrew edition of the Pentateuch to 273-272 BCE. As he argues that it has to have been later than Ariston's exploration of the Arabian coast which he dates to 278 to 276 BCE, (Berossus and Genesis, Manetho and Exodus, p. 161) the maximum period of compostion was composed was five-six years. He dates the LXX translation to no later than 269 BCE.